This week, we're joining Brandee in the kitchen to learn about Flavor Profiles. Spend some time thinking about what flavors are your favorites, and then try your hand at combining flavors by making your own salad dressing.

Can you name six different flavors? What type of flavor is your favorite? What happens when you mix them? Join Brandee in her kitchen as she answers these questions while tasting some different flavors found in her kitchen. Then try finding your own!

The six different flavors are: sour, spicy, salty, bitter, umami, and sweet

Try finding a food for each of the six flavors in your kitchen Here are some examples:

Sour: lemon, lime, pickles, vinegar

Spicy: hot sauce, garlic, ginger, pepper

Salty: chips, pretzels, crackers

Bitter: coffee, dark chocolate, kale, grapefruit

Umami: avocado, miso, seaweed, parmesan

Sweet: fruit, honey, maple syrup

Follow along with Brandee in the video as she tastes each different flavor. What flavors are your favorites? Are there any you don't like? Could you mix any together to make them taste better?

Make a list of your favorite foods or recipes. What flavors are included? Do you tend to enjoy sweet foods or salty foods better? Do any of your favorite foods have bitter or sour flavors?

Sometimes when a food has too much of one flavor, we can balance it by adding another. For example, black coffee is very bitter, which is why some people add sugar and milk to balance it. Believe it or not, chocolate is made out of cacao beans, which are extremely bitter. When it's processed into chocolate, sugar and milk are added to make it more tasty. Some other delicious examples of mixed flavors are chocolate-covered pretzels (salty and sweet) and pickles (salty and sour).

To experiment further with different tastes, try making your own salad dressing! The secret to perfect homemade salad dressing is a balance of different flavors. You can include: olive oil, vinegar (any kind), lemon, garlic, honey, maple syrup, brown sugar, black pepper, salt, mustard, and dried or fresh herbs. Try mixing together a small amount of some of these ingredients, and taste it. Does one flavor overpower the others? Try adding something else to balance it.

One of the first flowers to arrive in the spring, dandelions are a resilient plant, often popping up in unlikely places like walls and cracks in sidewalks. This quality- along with their ability to quickly spread, and their taproot which is notoriously difficult to dig up- means they are often considered a pesky weed, but dandelions are also a pollinator's best friend. Dandelions are some of the first flowers to bloom- between March and May- and provide an essential food source for bees and other early pollinators. Dandelions get their name from the French ​dent de lion ​ which means lion's tooth, referring to its jagged, toothed leaves.​​

The return of spring means the return of flies a common name which includes over 100,000 different species. The flies you're most likely to see on Martha's Vineyard include horse flies, green flies, hover flies, and house flies. Flies might be a nuisance when you're trying to relax at the beach or spend time outdoors, but they are actually an important pollinator, helping to continue the life cycle of our plants and flowers. Flies are also an essential part of our ecosystem, serving as a food source for fish and larger insects. Most flying insects have four wings, but flies only have two. They can fly in all directions- up and down, side to side, and backwards!